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At least 91 records · Page 5
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2022

Cloud Adjustments From Large-Scale Smoke–Circulation Interactions Strongly Modulate the Southeastern Atlantic Stratocumulus-to-Cumulus Transition

Smoke from southern Africa blankets the southeastern Atlantic Ocean from June to October, producing strong and competing aerosol radiative effects. Smoke effects on the transition between overcast stratocumulus and scattered cumulus clouds are investigated along a Lagrangian (air-mass-following) trajectory in regional climate and large eddy simulation models. Results are compared with observations from three recent field campaigns that took place in August 2017: ObseRvations of Aerosols above CLouds and their intEractionS (ORACLES), CLouds and Aerosol Radiative Impacts and Forcing: Year 2017 (CLARIFY), and Layered Atlantic Smoke Interactions with Clouds (LASIC). The case study is set up around the joint ORACLES–CLARIFY flight that took place near Ascension Island on 18 August 2017. Smoke sampled upstream on an ORACLES flight on 15 August 2017 likely entrained into the marine boundary layer later sampled during the joint flight. The case is first simulated with the WRF-CAM5 regional climate model in three distinct setups: (1) FireOn, in which smoke emissions and any resulting smoke–cloud–radiation interactions are included; (2) FireOff, in which no smoke emissions are included; (3) RadOff, in which smoke emissions and their microphysical effects are included but aerosol does not interact directly with radiation. Over the course of the Lagrangian trajectory, differences in free tropospheric thermodynamic properties between FireOn and FireOff are nearly identical to those between FireOn and RadOff, showing that aerosol–radiation interactions are primarily responsible for the free tropospheric effects. These effects are non-intuitive: in addition to the expected heating within the core of the smoke plume, there is also a “banding” effect of cooler temperature (∼1–2 K) and greatly enhanced moisture (>2 g kg−1) at the plume top. This banding effect is caused by a vertical displacement of the former continental boundary layer in the free troposphere in the FireOn simulation resulting from anomalous diabatic heating due to smoke absorption of sunlight that manifests primarily as a few hundred meters per day reduction in large-scale subsidence over the ocean. A large eddy simulation (LES) is then forced with free tropospheric fields taken from the outputs for the WRF-CAM5 FireOn and FireOff runs. Cases are run by selectively perturbing one variable (e.g., aerosol number concentration, temperature, moisture, vertical velocity) at a time to better understand the contributions from different indirect (microphysical), “large-scale” semi-direct (above-cloud thermodynamic and subsidence changes), and “local” semi-direct (below-cloud smoke absorption) effects. Despite a more than 5-fold increase in cloud droplet number concentration when including smoke aerosol concentrations, minimal differences in cloud fraction evolution are simulated by the LES when comparing the base case with a perturbed aerosol case with identical thermodynamic and dynamic forcings. A factor of 2 decrease in background free tropospheric aerosol concentrations from the FireOff simulation shifts the cloud evolution from a classical entrainment-driven “deepening–warming” transition to trade cumulus to a precipitation-driven “drizzle-depletion” transition to open cells, however. The thermodynamic and dynamic changes caused by the WRF-simulated large-scale adjustments to smoke diabatic heating strongly influence cloud evolution in terms of both the rate of deepening (especially for changes in the inversion temperature jump and in subsidence) and in cloud fraction on the final day of the simulation (especially for the moisture “banding” effect). Such large-scale semi-direct effects would not have been possible to simulate using a small-domain LES model alone.

southeast Atlantic Ocean↗
DOE OSTI2018

Cluster truncated Wigner approximation in strongly interacting systems

We present a general method by which linear quantum Hamiltonian dynamics with exponentially many degrees of freedom is replaced by approximate classical nonlinear dynamics with the number of degrees of freedom (phase space dimensionality) scaling polynomially in the system size. This method is based on generalization of the truncated Wigner approximation (TWA) to a higher dimensional phase space, where phase space variables are associated with a complete set of quantum operators spanning finite size clusters. The method becomes asymptotically exact with increasing cluster size. The crucial feature of TWA is fluctuating initial conditions, which we approximate by a Gaussian distribution. We show that such fluctuations dramatically increase accuracy of TWA over traditional cluster mean-field approximations. In this way we can treat on equal footing quantum and thermal fluctuations as well as compute entanglement and various equal and non-equal time correlation functions. The main limitation of the method is exponential scaling of the phase space dimensionality with the cluster size, which can be significantly reduced by using the language of Schwinger bosons and can likely be further reduced by truncating the local Hilbert space variables. We demonstrate the power of this method analyzing dynamics in various spin chains with and without disorder and show that we can capture such phenomena as long time hydrodynamic relaxation, many-body localization and the ballistic spread of entanglement.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2014

Foundation of Hydrodynamics of Strongly Interacting Systems

Hydrodynamics and quantum mechanics have many elements in common, as the density field and velocity fields are common variables that can be constructed in both descriptions. Starting with the Schroedinger equation and the Klein-Gordon for a single particle in hydrodynamical form, we examine the basic assumptions under which a quantum system of particles interacting through their mean fields can be described by hydrodynamics.

Wong, Cheuk-Yin↗
DOE OSTI2017

Communication: Spectroscopic characterization of a strongly interacting C (2) H group on the EMIM + cation in the (EMIM + ) 2 X - (X = BF 4 , Cl, Br, and I) ternary building blocks of ionic liquids

Here, to unravel the intermolecular interactions at play in the assemblies of EMIM-based ionic liquids, we report the vibrational spectra of the cryogenically cooled, cationic ternary complexes with halide ions, (EMIM + ) 2 X - , X = Cl, Br, and I. This series specifically addresses the spectral response of the acidic C (2) H group upon complexation with an atomic anion, which is isolated by selective deuteration at this position. Unlike the behavior of the related BF4- complex, the halide systems display large (~175 cm -1 ) red-shifts and dramatic (~30X) intensity enhancements in the C (2) D stretch (relative to that of the bare d (2) -EMIM + cation), which are largest for the chloride anion. Lastly, electronic structure calculations indicate that, while the spectroscopic signatures of the interaction follow those expected for a traditional hydrogen bond to the C (2) H group, the C–H–X docking arrangement deviates substantially from linearity due to a “double contact” motif involving a weaker interaction to the nearby methyl group [Hunt et al., Chem. Soc. Rev. 44(5), 1257–1288 (2015)].

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2021

Phonon gas model for thermal conductivity of dense, strongly interacting liquids

Developing predictive thermal property models for liquids based on microscopic principles has been elusive. The difficulty is that liquids have gas-like and solid-like attributes that are at odds when considering the frameworks of microscopic models: Models for gases are simple due to randomness and low density, whereas models for crystalline solids rely on symmetry and long-range order for easier calculation. The short-range order in liquids does, however, provide structure to neighboring molecules similar to amorphous solids, and there have been recent advances indicating that collective vibrational modes store heat in liquids. Models combining Debye approximations from solid-state physics and Frenkel’s theory of liquids can accurately predict the heat capacity of liquids. Phonon-like dispersions in liquids have also been widely observed in neutron scattering experiments. These developments motivate us to propose a model where high-frequency vibrational modes, which travel at the speed of sound and have a mean free path on the order of the average intermolecular distance, conduct heat in liquids. We use this liquid phonon gas model to calculate the thermal conductivity of liquids with varying intermolecular interaction energies from strongest to weakest—Coulomb, hydrogen-bonding, Keesom, and London dispersion energy. Generally, the model is more accurate as the intermolecular interaction energy and density of liquids increase. The calculated thermal conductivity of Coulombic-bound molten sodium nitrate and hydrogen-bonded water is within 1.46% and 2.98% of the experimentally measured values, respectively, across their entire temperature ranges. Further modal analysis of the velocity and the mean free path of collective vibrations could establish the liquid phonon gas model as an accurate model for weakly interacting liquids as well.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2026

Dressed-State Hamiltonian Engineering in a Strongly Interacting Solid-State Spin Ensemble

In quantum science applications, ranging from many-body physics to quantum metrology, dipolar interactions in spin ensembles are often controlled via Floquet engineering. However, this technique typically reduces the interaction strength between spins and effectively weakens the coupling to a target sensing field, limiting the metrological sensitivity. In this Letter, we develop and demonstrate an alternative method that directly tunes the native dipolar interaction in an ensemble of nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond, thereby overcoming these limitations inherent to Floquet engineering. Our approach utilizes dressed-state qubit encoding under a bias magnetic field applied perpendicular to the crystal lattice orientation. This method leads to a 3.2× enhancement of the dimensionless coherence parameter JT 2 compared to state-of-the-art Floquet engineering and a 2.6× (8.3 dB) enhanced sensitivity in ac magnetometry. Furthermore, our results provide a powerful Hamiltonian engineering tool for future studies with NV ensembles and other interacting higher-spin (S > $\frac{1}{2}$) systems.

Quantum control↗
DOE OSTI2024

BCS-BEC crossover of the strongly interacting 6 Li − 40 K mixture

Here, we present quantum Monte Carlo calculations of the properties of a two-component mass-imbalanced Fermi gas, corresponding to the 6 Li − 40 K mixture. We compute the equation of state of the unpolarized system as a function of the scattering length with particular attention paid to the unitary limit, where the effect of the effective range of the interaction is explored. In order to investigate differences from the equal-mass case we also compute the pair-distribution function and the momentum distribution over a range of interaction strengths, which can provide information about the structure of the system. Finally, we compute the heavy-light quasiparticle spectrum for the full crossover regime. Our theoretical predictions, based on quantum Monte Carlo calculations, should inform future theoretical studies and can be tested by experiments with ultracold fermionic gases.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗